This train

"Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and unknown.  Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, and to them, alas! we return."

E.M. Forster

ABOARD THE LINCOLN SERVICE – There’s still magic in a train.  Not just in the soft, rhythmic clatter of the wheels, or the distant whistle that warns motorists at each crossing.

Pulling in to Dwight, Ill.

No, it’s the comforting combination of fixed destination ahead and fresh surroundings along the way. Because the view you get by train is both old and new.  Old, in that track routes were established in this country more than a century ago and have changed little since. New, because unless you work on the railroad, a passenger sees landscapes not often traveled otherwise.

So there are farmers’ fields, of course, though these days they seem lorded over by swirling wind turbines.  And snapshots of old, abandoned, industrial backsides of cities like Joliet and Pontiac. But also the bustling town squares of burgs like Dwight and Lincoln.

There’s still adventure in pulling alongside a squat train station, not knowing where you are until your window passes the town’s name fixed against the station wall. 

Smiles before the beluga show.

Zach and I are headed home aboard the Lincoln Service after a long weekend in Chicago.  He and I make a habit of getting away each year by ourselves.  Last year it was fly-fishing in Colorado.  One January we visited the Michigan cottage to measure the snow.  We’ve been to Phoenix for baseball spring training, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland … places of shared interest.

This time it was Chicago.  We took the Southwest Chief up on Thursday.  It’s a more direct route from Kansas City, angling northeast and passing through Marceline, Mo. – where Walt Disney learned to love the train’s whistle – through the southeast corner of Iowa, and then straight east into Chicago.

The Chief starts in Los Angeles, so there are elaborate sleeper cars aboard and not-bad dining.

Our trip home is not as efficient, angling south-southwest roughly parallel to old Route 66, through Springfield (“Lincoln Service,” remember?) with a stop in St. Louis, then west aboard the Missouri River Runner. True to its name, that train at times hangs incredibly tight to the river’s southern bluffs.  We’ll roll in at about 9:30 p.m.

Weaver men tend to be quiet sorts, though we do use these weekends to catch up with good conversation.  We also enjoy simply sharing the experience. 

City of Big Skirts.

We found a small hotel close to Michigan Avenue so that we’d be in the thick of Chicago’s bustle but also close to our beloved Lake Michigan.  We took in the aquarium – three beluga whales, we learned, can be as loud as a thousand banshees – dodged Twinkie residue at the Blue Man Group, and finished the visit with the Bulls game.  It was a perfect end to the weekend … the Bulls beating the Raptors by a two-pointer with less than a second left in overtime.

This is true city life.  Not the slow-paced, quiet cordiality of Kansas City, but the fast-moving mix of pedestrian-filled sidewalks, brake-riding cabbies, and the din of horns, truck exhausts and the occasional foul word.

On Day 1, Zach seemed unsure about the city’s speed.  But by Day 2, he’d fully caught up, even allowing that he could see himself living and working in such a place. 

City of Big Beans.

Chicago's the City of the Big Shoulders, Carl Sandburg wrote.  But we quickly learned it's also the City of Big Skirts – the Marilyn Monroe statue –  the City of Big Beans – the Cloud Gate sculpture – and the City of Big Doors – Oprah's door from her infamous TV show, on display at the city's broadcasting museum.

"Big" is Chicago's charm.

Oh, and it's best if you come with a big appetite. We also caught up with close friends Steve and his son Tyler, and Tyler’s friend, Sarah.   Steve’s slowly been working on a book about pies. So he discovered a little pie shop called Hoosier Mama’s on Chicago’s near west side.  We met there to talk and, of course, to eat.

As Steve will tell you, there’s a fine art to making the perfect pie. At Hoosier Mama’s, they were lined up almost out the door.  Artists clearly were at work inside.

Steve and Hoosier Mama.

We talked about the latest news among the families, but inevitably discussed what was ahead for the young ones around the table – Zach, Tyler, Sarah.  Not that Steve’s and my futures aren’t interesting.  But our paths are well-worn while theirs are barely touched.

Sarah and Tyler.

Each of the kids had a fascinating story to tell of their job hopes and dreams.  Okay, perhaps the fascination eluded them, but each is on a track foreign to me.  So it seemed  fresh and exciting.  Zach is gaining vast experience in video art and production, Tyler is mastering the law, Sarah is working in a Chicago office tower for a major advertising company.

And maybe “track” isn’t the right word.  There’s always uncertainty in these conversations … a lot of “hope to’s” and “plan on’s” and “we’ll see’s.”  And some worry, for sure.  It’s not like any of the three has a future locked down tight.

But that’s just fine. They shouldn’t be so sure of things, really. Not yet.  Not completely.

The track metaphor is appropriate in one sense, though.

Freedom train.

The joy of the train is the confidence you feel that you’ll eventually arrive at your destination safe and sound.  But meanwhile, during the trip, you can stare out the window, see things you’ve never seen, freely let your mind wander, imagine things unimagined.

Zach, Tyler and Sarah should be as confident … know the future will be there before they realize it, but in the meantime, savor the journey and its magic.

It’s a notion best not forgotten, especially among us mid-lifers.

The Lincoln Service is just now crossing the Mississippi.  It rides high atop what seems a very narrow bridge, with nothing structural between the window and the green, swirling waters below.

The bridge seems so fragile, which makes it thrilling.

This is St. Louis, my first home … where I was born.  There are so many memories here.  “Alas! we return,” wrote Forster.

But I think Woody Guthrie said it better, in another way. And I can’t help but hum the tune as the wheels clatter a beat across this iron trestle.

“This train is bound for glory, this train.”

Basso profundo

I was nervous. 

A Miss Rep choir ... the '50s, I think.

When one hasn’t sung publicly in years, you worry about things.  Will my pitch be as slippery as a slide whistle’s?  Will my pre-teen voice come squeaking back? Will the high notes be divine harmony or a devil’s honk?

But there I was on the stage of my high school’s auditorium like it was 1973, the stage lights blinding me, sweat trickling, my mouth full of cotton.

Oh, I wasn’t alone.  I had a good, solid bass section around me, plus altos in front, and sopranos and tenors to my left.  Below us sat the audience, though the lights mercifully made them hard to see.

Beloved Miss Rep.

It was the first-ever Webster Groves Acapella Choir Reunion.  Past choir members from as far back as the ‘40s were there, providing a concert with other choirs and the band to raise funds for a new piano.  A piano first used by beloved choir director “Miss Rep” during her 40-year reign had at last reached its end.

If someone tells you there’s no point re-living the past, tell ‘em they’re full of beans.  Especially when what you re-live did so much to mold your good side … spawned that angel on your right shoulder.

A-Choir was that turning point for me, when I went from a shy, quiet, insecure kid to a star of the stage.  Okay, not a star.  But little, reticent Dougie was no more.  No, Doug became great things – a sword dancer in Brigadoon, the mighty-fisted Bosun’s Mate in HMS Pinafore, the clean-cut baritone in a barbersharp quartet called “Three Sharps and a Fat.”  (I was one of the Sharps.  Good-friend Jer, a tenor – svelte now but heavier then – was our Fat.) 

Sure, other great things happened in high school.  I met girls, fell in love, fell out of love, imagined myself a great thinker and writer, became philosophical about some things, spiritual about others, swam my heart out competitively … the latter so important that to this day water remains a security blanket.  And I learned things, like the healthy limits of drink and smoke, and the power of helping others.

But choir was my Hallelujah time, when all seemed truly right with the world.

And so when I heard of this reunion through Jer and others, it was a clarion call.  Never mind that I’d not sung in any organized way for years.  Never mind that flats and sharps seemed more distant than Flatt and Scruggs. 

I was going to do this, damnit.  I owed it to A-Choir.  I owed it to myself.

My worries didn’t stop on the drive to St. Louis.  I’d been testing my voice the prior week, singing tunes in the car mainly during the drive home from work.  I could hit those low notes, but the high ones could peel paint off the dashboard.

And so as Cindy and I drove east, I imagined the worst, especially when it was time to reach the stage.

Rehearsing!

After greeting friends rarely seen – a gift in itself – we gathered for our one-day rehearsal.  The line-up would include five of Miss Rep’s favorites … Emitte Spiritum Tuum (in Latin!), Madame Jeanette, No Man Is an Island, Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Hallelujah Chorus.  Oh, we’d also end with The Lord Bless You and Keep You.

It was a jovial group of singers, mostly gray-haired like myself and numbering more than 65.  But I learned quickly that, unlike me, nearly all of them had continued singing in choirs of one sort or another. 

On the one hand, that wasn’t good.  I remember this recorded song by Art Garfunkel called “All I Know,” and during it you can hear, quite distinctly, a cello so off key it makes your teeth hurt. 

I feared being the cello.

On the other hand, having powerful, confident voices by both shoulders can hide much. “Heck,” I thought. “I can mouth the words if it comes to that.”

But that was a cop out.  I so wanted to be the powerful, confident voice of 1973.

“Doug, you just need to do it,” I told myself. “Just belt it out.  Open wide, sing strong, hope for the best.”

The director, Barbara Love Sarich (class of ’62), didn’t hesitate to get us going.  No warm-ups, no scales.  Instead, we plunged right in to Emitte Spiritum Tuum.

Three things immediately occurred to me:  I could still read music, I could still fake Latin.

And, good God, I could still sing.  Bolstered by my fellow basses, my voice rang confident and true.  Sure, I kept it safe, singing the lowest bass line possible.  But I was not only keeping up, I was contributing.  My weeks of doubts and fears rolled off like water.

By the second page of music, I was no stinking cello.  I was a basso profundo!

And we sounded glorious, the Latin and the harmonies in a sacred embrace. It was magic, and we all felt it.  I expected the Pope to walk in.

But rehearsals are one thing, live performances another.  Even when I was at my prime 39 years ago, I would get nervous before going on stage.  Not sure why.  Shyness never completely leaves a person, I think.

The next day, we filed in to the auditorium to our appointed seats.  There we were to sit and wait until it was our turn to mount the stage.  There was an ample crowd.  I assured myself that, given the reason for the concert, they would be forgiving.

I glanced around.  The auditorium had not changed much. It was my favorite place at high school … because of choir but also because I was active in the light crew.  “Quite a few memories here,” I told the guy sitting next to me.  So many.

After the concert, friends gather.

And then our turn came.  As we marched up, to calm my nerves, I forced myself to think of why I was doing this.  “This is for Mom and Dad,” I told myself.  “They’d so enjoy this.”  And for Cindy … and my siblings, I thought, each of whom also sang in A-Choir.

And of course for the new piano and the young singers who would learn at its feet. 

But ultimately, and selfishly, I was doing this for the pure joy of it.

And so we began.  And as before, the first notes shed the fear, stopped the sweat, cleared the voice.  Freed the spirit.

I sang big.  I sang strong … triumphant. 

I was back. 

Hallelujah. 

Cobbles to concrete

Quite a cultural shift, I’d say.

View from the 42nd floor.

One day you’re among the lush green of this nation’s northwest, by the blue waters where Orcas and seals play.  Almost the next, you’re peering out of an office window from the 42nd floor of a Texas oil building onto the concrete canyon below.

We won’t even discuss the politics of the shift.  The geographic change is plenty enough to handle.

So it is with daughter Meghan, who just left Bellingham, Wash., to start an internship in Houston with a major oil company.

Emerald Lake.

It’s a shift for us parents, too.  A few weekends ago, we were in Belllingham for some final wedding planning.  It was a fantastic trip.  We rented a small house overlooking Emerald Lake on Bellingham’s northeast side.  It was a cold, wet and blustery weekend, so we didn’t get out around the lake much.  But the views were satisfying.

Meghan, Eric ready to sample.

We did the important things:  Checked out the reception hall one more time to size it up for decorations; sampled the reception food; went through a checklist of other to-dos and concerns.  July 14^th is not far away.

And we helped Meghan do more of her school research.  If you recall, she’d been charting the impact of tidal waves on the fist-sized rocks that layer Washington’s coast. She’s done this through an ingenious combination of electronic tags embedded in a select number of the rocks – “cobbles,” she calls them – and high-tech GPS equipment that shouts to satellites high above, triangulating the cobbles’ location far below.

Such research is helpful as scientists assess the impact of rising tides on global erosion.

Meghan unloads the Jeep.

So on our first night, Cindy, Meghan and I hiked to the beach, laden with electronic equipment, dressed in thick layers because of the cold winds, each of us wearing a headlight not unlike what miners wear far underground.

Fiancé Eric, also a geologist, usually helps during these beach visits.  But he was unavailable this night, and it was critical because of the timing of the tides that measurements be done. 

Our job was to find Meghan’s rocks – each named with numbers, like “A05,” “D54” “FB6”  – and once found, Meghan would use GPS to track their movement since her last visit.

In search of "beep!"

It was an adventure. First, as Cindy observed, it gave me my water fix.  For as we worked, the waves lapped ashore as they do in all the places we love … Michigan, the Gulf Coast, and now the Strait of Georgia, part of the Salish Sea near Bellingham.  To me, waves are God’s mantra, the universal pulse.  They calm the soul like a mother’s heartbeat calms a babe.

Interestingly, the rocks hadn’t moved much.  “Piece of cake,” I thought as I steered the yellow ringed detector back and forth like a beach comber hunting treasure.

 

Cindy, left, Meghan chart findings.

The detector issued a soft “beep, beep, beep” when it hovered over a tagged cobble. And the rocks were relatively close to each other, so finding them and measuring them proved easy.

But the night adventure was not our only visit to the beach.  We had to return in early afternoon that Saturday, again because of the tide.  This time, though, we anticipated more severe shifting of cobbles, because high winds and waves had pounded the shore since Thursday. 

We hiked in again.  And it was a different beach.  Markers we’d used that night were now completely gone.  Sure, the basic outline of the beach was the same.  But everything within its boundaries seemed altered.

And so we donned or set up our equipment and established search lines, carving the beach into equal rows like one does cutting grass with a lawn mower. It was critical that we not miss a spot with our yellow contraption, so we dropped small, bright-orange strips to mark the rows.

We walked, moving the detector left and right.  And we walked some more.  Up the beach.  Down the beach.  Near the trail’s end, all the way to the water.

No “beep.”  

I could tell that Meghan was worried.  She took over the detector, wishing Eric was there because of his uncanny ability to locate the cobbles.  The worry was real.  Had the storm moved the rocks too far? Or perhaps even buried them so deep that they’d be undetectable … and her many weeks of research wasted?

Meghan had estimated the waves’ movements based on weather reports.  The storm had come up from the south, but then there was a countering force from the north.  The unknown was the relative strength of each. Would the waves have pushed the rocks farther north than the countervailing waves pushed them south?

That was Meghan’s hunch.  But she had only web-based tidal movements to base those hunches on.

And so we looked at the northern edges.  And got no beeps.

So Meghan had us look south.

“Beep, beep!”

At last, a strike.

I don’t recall the number of that rock.  But I was relieved.  Because I had learned quickly that where one sits, the others usually are nearby.

Lords of the ring.

Meantime, the soft rain had turned to sleet.  Meghan kept looking at us, fearing we were unhappy researchers. We were loving it.  And I had my waves.

We found those cobbles … eventually more than 40.   In fact, they were widely scattered, some buried, indicative of the power of the storm.  And it took considerable time for Meghan to establish each rock’s GPS coordinates.

But Meghan’s research would live another day.

Once done, we headed back up the trail to Bellingham.  The cold and wet left us chafed but alive.  Cindy and I trod up the long hill, but Meghan ran it like a gazelle – her chance at exercise, she said – before we caught up with her for the leisurely walk back to her Jeep.

Now she sits in a Texas office, surveying Houston’s landscape from an altitude likely shared by oil barons. She’s done her homework well … prepared herself for this internship.  She’ll do a fantastic job.

And yet I’m sure her heart is still in Bellingham.  Eric is there, along with the bunnies.  The concrete canyons of Texas might have their appeal, but once you’ve lived the lush green of the northwest territories, little can compare. 

The internship will seem to go quickly, I think.  She'll be back in Bellingham soon.

On Sunday, I gave Meghan a call.  I asked her the address of her office building.  I’m an occasional visitor to Houston because of some trade shows that I attend.  I know downtown pretty well.

She shared the address, so I accessed Google Earth on my phone and zoomed down to take a look.  Sure enough, she was housed in an office tower, not far from where I peddle books in October.

Monday, she texted me a photo out her window.

“Here’s my office view! 42^nd floor,” she said.

“Very cool!” I texted back. “Are you facing north? South? You might see some thunderstorms roll in sometime.”

“Not sure.  I think north,” she wrote.

In fact, using her photo and comparing it to the streets and highways on Google Earth, I figured she was facing northwest …  and Bellingham.  She could have faced south, or east ... who knows the whims of the corporate-office assignor?  There are 360 degrees on a compass. She beat the odds.

Then again, I believe things happen for a reason.

“I think your office faces northwest,” I texted.  “And if you look real hard, you can see your bunnies.”

She texted back.

“That makes me happy.”